Disreputable People

by Penelope Rowe

  Presently, yapping, Rodney wriggled out of another hole about twenty yards away, came charging full pelt at the Colonel and heigh-di-ho leapt into his arms and snuffled into his windcheater. The Colonel crooned and introduced himself.

  ‘Clint’s the name. Colonel Clint. Been here many times. Marvellous spot. Marvellous.’

  ‘Poke,’ said Len chattily.

  ‘What’s that?’ snapped the Colonel.

  ‘Poke. Remember? We’ve already met. Len Poke.’ He held out his hand but the Colonel was bowing in a courtly fashion to Iris.

  ‘Delighted,’ said the Colonel. Iris flirted.

  ‘Iris Wisby,’ she said. ‘We met. At the dahlias.’ The colonel grunted. Whatever was the woman talking about? Whoever was this woman? Iris whistled a few bars of ‘Colonel Bogey’, which quite surprised both Len and the Colonel. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You say you’ve been here before. Then you’re the expert. Goody. You must tell me all about it.’ Len sort of dangled at the edge of her chatter.

  She slipped her arm through the Colonel’s and manoeuvred them adroitly in the direction of the Cradle Mountain Lodge bar. ‘I’ll pick your brains,’ she said. ‘Drinks are on me.’

  ‘Delighted,’ said the Colonel with alacrity and off they went. Rodney made a very rude smell. Len followed, uncertainly at first, but Iris peeked at him over the Colonel’s shoulder, gave a nice toss of her head and a come-on smile so he felt better and walked with more of a spring.

  ‘When I’m on holidays, I like to experiment,’ said Iris when they had found themselves a seat in front of the fire. ‘Tonight, pina coladas! Tomorrow, what are those things the young ones like so much? Daiquiris! After that, harvey wallbangers! I just love to break out of the same old routine, don’t you, Colonel?’ The Colonel had been hoping for a good scotch but practice had taught him what was good for him.

  ‘Pina coladas coming up,’ he said and smoothly took the note that Iris crumpled into his hand.

  ‘I’m more a beer man, myself,’ said Len, but no-one heard him.

  The Colonel appeared to know most of the drinkers, bowing and greeting as he made his way to the bar but Iris sat tall and wore him like a trophy. The three of them sipped their pina coladas and deferred to the Colonel.

  ‘I must tell you. To be perfectly honest, I’m not overly impressed with the set-up here,’ said the Colonel. ‘I only come because Rodney likes it. Such difficulties if I attempt to take him overseas. The fuss.’

  Iris tut-tutted. ‘My dear, I can imagine,’ she said sympathetically.

  ‘This time last year I was white water rafting in Peru,’ he said, rather changing the topic.

  ‘Fancy that, Len,’ said Iris, graciously including him.

  That wasn’t a patch on the Sahel, though. Camels. Three weeks. And the Zambesi. I can tell you … But what am I thinking of? Our glasses are empty.’ He made a gesture towards his trouser pocket.

  ‘No, no,’ insisted Iris. ‘I said tonight’s on me, so let’s not have any more fuss about it.’ Len looked at her. What a generous woman. She quite overwhelmed him. ‘You never stop learning,’ she told Len confidentially while the Colonel was collecting the next round.

  By the time the dining room gong boomed Iris and the Colonel were quite chummy. Len followed them to a table. At first it seemed they had the whole table to themselves. Seven spare places and no takers. Len became aware, because of the smell, and because of small movements in the Colonel’s chest, that Rodney was with them. It was going to be a long meal.

  Then a waiter arrived with seven people in tow and directed them to the spare seats. Len sensed some reluctance, but they did as they were told and sat down.

  ‘They don’t order you round like this at Club Med, Lindeman Island,’ someone complained.

  ‘Poke,’ said Len in a friendly fashion, leaning down the table. ‘Len Poke.’ Faces turned to look at him rather rudely, resigned. ‘This is Miss Wisby.’

  ‘Oh, Iris, please, Iris.’

  ‘And this is Colonel …’

  ‘We’ve met,’ said a young thing and rolled her eyes. Her girlfriend sniggered.

  ‘The Colonel has been regaling us with the most exciting stories,’ began Iris in her brightest social voice. ‘You’ve no idea …’

  ‘Yes, we have,’ said the same young thing with such venom that Iris was quite taken aback. ‘Over Niagara in a bucket?’ Her friend giggled and shoved her in the ribs. ‘Watusi? Some of my best friends are Watusi. Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Across the Atlantic singlehanded in a balloon?’

  ‘How fascinating,’ murmured Iris, thrown.

  It was left to Len to get things rolling again as the Colonel was occupied with Rodney. ‘What are the best walks here, do you think?’ he asked.

  The girls rolled their eyes at each other again and hogged the bread.

  ‘Well,’ the giggler began grudgingly, ‘you …’

  ‘Walks? Nothing here to equal the Andes or Krakatoa, of course, but you’ll probably enjoy a stroll up to Dove Lake. Crater Lake, well I’ve done it dozens of times myself, but it’s probably a bit far for you,’ decreed the Colonel.

  ‘Oh, no,’ contradicted Iris, laughing. ‘Len and I are fit for anything, aren’t we, Len?’ She swung out on her chair and waved her thin legs in the air. ‘Not a bad pair of pins for an old bird, eh?’ Len felt a slight unease. The three of them seemed curiously remote from the rest of the table. Only those two young girls had spoken, the other five eating silently, avoiding eye contact.

  ‘When I was in Burma,’ said the Colonel, ‘I saw women with the best legs in the world.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Iris. ‘That’s not very complimentary.’ She laughed to show she had not taken offence.

  ‘What’s that frightful smell?’ asked the rude girl. ‘It’s putting me off my dinner.’ She was looking directly at Len. He did not want her to think he was responsible.’

  ‘I think it’s Rodney,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rodney.’ Len indicated in the Colonel’s direction.

  ‘Oh, him. He’s disgusting.’ Len felt there had been a misunderstanding.

  ‘It’s the wildflowers, I love,’ said Iris. ‘Of course, it’s not quite the time for them now but …’

  ‘I prefer dahlias,’ said the Colonel. ‘Won a number of prizes …’

  ‘But, of course, Colonel, I remember,’ said Iris.

  ‘… but you don’t get the profusion here that you do in South America. It’s the fertilisation. The bees. I am quite an expert on bees, you know.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Iris faintly, wearing out but still trying. ‘I’ve heard of South American bees. Marabunta. I saw them in a film with that lovely Charlton Heston.’

  ‘They were ants,’ said Len, remarkably shortly for him.

  ‘Were they? Oh, well, what’s the diff?’ But her voice had lost that sparky cheek.

  ‘Amsterdam. Attended a conference. Ask me later. I’ll show you my awards. Damn bitchy world, the world of the beekeeper. Would you excuse me a moment. Rodney wants to tell me something.’ The Colonel rose briskly and marched from the dining room.

  ‘Thank God he’s gone,’ said a lady, a dentist from Launceston. ‘I told that waiter I wouldn’t sit with him another night but she said we should have been quicker to the dining room then. My husband is getting over a bypass.’

  Colonel Clint returned from putting Rodney to bed just after the announcement was made that the native fauna would be fed from the front verandah in five minutes.

  ‘Not for me,’ he said. ‘Serengeti, Kruger, Londolosi. Seen them all. The big five. Lion, buffalo, elephant et cetera, et cetera. A few mangy possums leave me cold.’ But the table had emptied. The Colonel lit his pipe and wandered back to the bar.

  Quite to his surprise, Len found that Iris was by his side out in the darkness on the verandah.

  ‘Ooh,’ she squealed as the Tasmanian devil danced on his hind legs for a slab of meat. ‘Look at those little red eyes, would you. I had a
husband once with eyes like that.’ Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she hurried on. ‘I don’t like to be unkind, Len, but the Colonel is rather difficult, isn’t he? I must try to be especially kind to him, poor fellow. It’s nerves, you know, makes them like that. They can’t help it. Let’s go in and I’ll shout us all a bedtime port. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Too right,’ said Len.

  Back in Sydney the following afternoon the Colonel stood in his rented room at the Evan Private Hotel, Pitt Street, twenty-five dollars per night, special rates for regulars, lit his pipe and sighed. It was a tiring life, his, always having to be one jump ahead. Now why couldn’t he have won a prize to a real overseas place, instead of Cradle Mountain? Enough to make a grown man weep, really. Your first shot at it since Korea and it had to be boring old Tassie. He hung his only suit carefully on the back of the door, pinching in the front leg creases with a damp cloth. He hung his white shirt over the back of his chair where the wet collar and underarm areas that he had sponged so vigorously dripped water onto the floor with tedious monotony. He adjusted his underwear and sighed at the state of his calves.

  ‘Oh no, Rodney, old boy,’ he said wearily. ‘Not again. Can’t you see I’ve just got undressed?’ He sighed again, scrunched up some old newspaper and set it and Rodney in the corner. ‘There you are. It will have to do until the morning. Good boy.’

  He tapped a glass of red from the cask beside the chair, drew deeply on his pipe and gazed around his shabby room. The only cheerful spots were the certificates on the mantelpiece and the yellow-covered National Geographies that stood in untidy piles against the wall. The Colonel estimated that he had about six hundred magazines, picked up for a song at the markets on a Saturday. He had enough travel, geography and personal anecdotes in those bundles to keep his conversational arsenal well loaded until the end of his life. But sometimes, leafing through them he felt something that he chose to call neuralgia, although it was more in the region of his heart.

  Presently he roused himself and leaned for the day’s paper. He held it gingerly at first, while he checked it for stains and worse—it was always better to do this than to discover too late. The things people dumped in street bins along with the papers you would not believe. He propped himself up against the bedhead and turned to the Births, Deaths and Marriages. He underlined a few addresses that boded well for the next few days then went halfheartedly through the Out and About section, which listed free activities around the city. These things did tend to pall. Food was rarely served and very few people seemed to have manners. The Colonel was a stickler for manners.

  In the past year Colonel Clint had covered the New Age field of the Out and About section, and discovered five past lives, heard some non-fatalistic astrological predictions, and tried to learn a bit about clairvoyance and telepathy, but the woman had insisted on five dollars up front and he was damned if he was going to pay. He had spent quite a bit of time at Causes. These included the Cyronics Association, several local history clubs, an immigration reform group (where he had thought his Korean experience might be of help), and Growing Through Grief, where he had hoped to meet some susceptible widows. No luck. He was now working his way through the Talks section, although much of it was not quite his style. After all, how much tomfoolery can a Korea vet put up with from some group calling itself the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation? He had gone along to the Menopause Information Night, with the widows in mind again, but to his surprise had not been admitted. He was seriously considering taking this breach to the Anti-Discrimination Board. He thought he might perhaps go to the Inappropriate Fat Accumulation introductory night. Not an ounce overweight was the Colonel, but those plump widows undulated in his imagination. Never know your luck. But for a good feed, the Births, Deaths and Marriages were the shot.

  He dragged his suitcase from under the bed and pulled out a parcel of cakes that he had taken from Cradle Mountain Lodge. He had also taken a vast quantity of biscuits but seeing that some of the cakes involved cream he thought they should be dealt with first. He had enough tea bags, coffee sachets and sugar cubes to last until Christmas.

  Presently he brushed the cake crumbs off his yellowing singlet, snuffed out his pipe, tipped the last of the red down his throat and turned towards the wall for sleep. The night closed down. The room smelled of Rodney, urine, stale smoke and the sweetish tang of poverty and dirt but the Colonel dreamed hopeful dreams.

  Iris Wisby and Len Poke spent an exceptionally pleasant five days at Cradle Mountain. Len was not someone Iris would normally have thought she might link up with but he was such a gentle fellow, so obliging and good-natured. Come to think of it, one of Iris’s favourite husbands had been like Len. Then it dawned on her. Of course, Len was ‘one of them’. That made things between them even easier. Although Iris liked to talk a bit cheekily down at the baths about her boyfriends, truth was, the old sex bit was beginning to rub a bit raw, so to speak. She was, after all, nearly seventy. So Len’s sexual preference came as a comfort, really. All play and no work for old Iris. What more could you want? Plus, Iris had a motherly streak that had never been fulfilled. She suspected her childlessness was the result of doing the splits too often and too early down at the Tivoli, although this had never been confirmed. Iris enjoyed mothering Len Poke.

  And Len? Like the Colonel, he was lonely—if less enterprising. He did his job at Veterans’ Affairs, entered Lotto every week, took his annual holidays away from Sydney in an attempt to broaden his mind, attended Church Fellowship, treated himself to his special tobacco and thought wistfully of meeting some nice man. He had a view to settling down. But doubted it would ever happen. After all, there had been no-one except the Major in Saigon, years ago. Len assumed now that his life would be unremarkable and solitary and sometimes this knowledge made him feel he might cry.

  Len had quite a time keeping up with Iris Wisby at Cradle Mountain despite his Vietnam training. Iris took the lead every morning and set a cracking pace. Crater Lake, piece of cake, Dove Lake, even easier, Marion’s Lookout, a real, aching-lungs-gasping-for-breath trek, and on the last day the five-hour trip to Lake Hanson, Twisted Lakes and Hansons Peak. Len found himself quite enchanted and relaxed about the way Iris would throw herself down on the turf like an upended brown beetle and do leg paddles to ease muscle cramps in her thighs. He looked forward to the moment on the trek, usually just after halfway, when Iris would bring the brandy flask out of her backpack, take a long swig and pass it to Len. He found himself telling Iris things, up there in the screaming windy reaches of Cradle Mountain, that he never thought he would tell anyone. Even about the Saigon Major and settling down.

  ‘Never mind, dear,’ said Iris, simply. ‘You’ve got me.’

  ‘Guess what, girls?’ said the outrageous Iris, back at Coogee Baths. ‘I’ve got myself a gigolo.’ This was not strictly true.

  ‘Oh, Iris,’ they screamed, envying her.

  Iris and Len had got on in such a splendidly quiet way that it seemed silly to Iris that Len should pay hard-earned money to rent a substandard flat when she had a whole house going begging. ‘My latest Japanese has gone, so I’d be looking for someone anyway,’ she insisted when Len, quite overwhelmed, demurred. ‘Life’s not so much fun as you get older. We can both do with the company, dear. You know that.’ And that is how Len came to live with her until she died, quite suddenly, in her sleep, four years later.

  Len was the official host at the wake—that Iris had provided for well in advance—but he let the ladies from the baths do what had to be done as regards catering and serving. He shared Iris memories, joined in the sing-songs and listened, a bit shocked, to the off-colour jokes. (He hadn’t realised they were such a raunchy bunch at the baths.)

  It was quite late in the drinking department when one of the ladies approached Len.

  ‘I’d hate to be tactless, but have you any idea who that fellow is? He’s been cadging all your scotch and I’ve just seen him fill his briefcase with sandwi
ches.’

  Len followed her gaze to the tall gaunt man in a shabby suit who was indeed in the very act of putting a cheese flan into his case.

  ‘Can’t say I know him,’ said Len indignantly. ‘Good heavens, some people will stop at nothing. I’ll go and have a word.’ He had grown far more confident under Iris’s auspices. He approached the stranger, righteously outraged. At first it was the whiff of something indefinable, then the rich aroma of vanilla-scented pipe tobacco, and then it was the slight movement inside the man’s shirt that brought it all back. Suddenly Len felt the generous, kindly ghost of Iris Wisby at his shoulder, guiding him. It’s nerves, you know, makes them like that. They can’t help it. He stepped forward and held out his hand.

  ‘Colonel. Colonel Clint. How nice to see you after all these years. How good of you to come. Iris would be thrilled.’ Whoever’s this? thought the Colonel hoping no-one had seen him with the flan.

  ‘Splendid,’ said the Colonel, ‘splendid. Clint’s the name. Colonel Clint. Must be getting along. Most unfortunate but I have several other functions to go to. Give my best wishes to the bride. Glad to have been of service. Any time.’ He bowed slightly and left to continue his quest.

  old dixie

  The night they drove old Dixie down she asked me to clean out the shack. Dixie had been the postmistress out Wallabadah way (nearish—I won’t say exactly where) since the days of the PMG. Even before that body turned into Australia Post eccentric old Dixie, as she was always called, even when she was quite young, was known to be past it, but she remained in situ until the new set-up and then she was eased out of the job with a small pension (and no-one replaced her, I might add, so much for new and efficient service, you had to go into Murrurundi for the mail).

  She was allowed to stay on in the shack, as we called it, for it was no more than that, having deteriorated badly over the years. As a child I had loved looking at this wooden, weather-battered, rusty-roofed little building that fronted the main (only) street just on the bend of the road, opposite the World War I memorial obelisk. I was fascinated by the faded painted slogans. Gibson’s Tea, Mother’s Choice Flour and you could just make out the figure of a lady in a frilly apron, Cerebros Salt with the little scampering chicken still visible, a mysterious sign for Dr Scott’s Electric Flesh Brush and another for Vigor’s Horse-Action Saddle with, in small print, but still decipherable, ‘as personally ordered by H.R.H. the Princess of Wales’. No-one would ever explain to me just what these last two items were for except to say they were silly things from the olden days. So, that gives you an idea of the age of the shack.